4 Situations
Something lingers in this room, caught in the simulacrum of object-memory-history. The momentary interruption is soft like a mothers scolding. Harsh words seem a token of care in her absence, demonic when she is near. Words are spoken in secret, to encompass a series of domestic rules. Who will maintain these rituals, rearrange the furniture, keepsake traditions? Girl, not-so-comely now.
The artist herself is part of the simulacrum, caught in a love affair with the commodity. There is no shape or logic to the past 100 years. A century of violence is transformed into sweeping movements with specific gestures and facial expressions. If this room is a home, it is womb bound and possessible like a Picasso painting. The artist interrupts this space with her image.
Beauty forces itself on the sharp structure of anti-aesthetics, inverting the subject. Like a spread in the New York Post, the images are spilling, pouring onto text. Fresh type ink smudges the door handle, negotiating the neutrality of the gallery space. True to this coalition of object-memory-history, Vermeer painted his subjects as startled deer. She adds movement to his brushstrokes.
The Peeping Tom animates the space, adding its scents to her vocabulary. Objecthood relies on an observer to transcend into reality. Soaked in it, this manifestation is killing the totem and re-creating it in one sweeping movement. The text is supported by a desire for something outside the body. The palimpsest could be a flowered wallpaper, a backdrop for your fading presence.
Marthe Ramm Fortun, Berlin 2010 |
